Mushroom Dyes

There was a meeting of the Mycological Association of Washington (MAW) this evening. The speaker was Susan Hopkins, who gave a talk on making textile dyes from various types of mushrooms. During the talk, she distributed a handout titled, "The Best Mushrooms for Color: A short Selection of the Best Mushrooms to Dye Wool". My favorite mushroom dye was made from the Hapalopilus Nidulans, which turns a vivid purple when mixed with a strong alkaline like ammonia or potassium hydroxide. That's something I'd like to try - it's a local mushroom so I may be able to find some around where I live. From class notes: ( The dying process )

This link shows other dyes that can be made with local mushrooms, some of which I may be able to grow myself. I've had some luck with growing Reishis, which make rust colored dye. Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™ by Miriam Rice contains additional information about mushroom dyes

Retesting post-by-email feature

This time posting from work.

Random acts of content unblocking

My workplace just got authorization by email from one of the heads of our Office to unblock Twitter.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be big news, except that Twitter (and anything that vaguely resembles it) has been blocked by my workplace forever. They also recently unblocked YouTube, which was also blocked forever.

I'm not sure what caused them to change their minds, but I'm not complaining.

The System Administrators were bantering back and forth about it.

Sysadmin 1 to Sysadmin 2: "I can't wait to see your moronic tweets".
Sysadmin 2 to Sysadmin 1: "You can follow me at sysadmin_1_is_a_jerk".

It went downhill from there...

I'm not sure where I was going with this. I think it was that each time a residual restriction from the past goes away, I feel a tiny bit more free - even if it doesn't affect me directly.